Devolution or local school management is either well entrenched in practice or high on the agendas of most State education systems in Australia. Although its advocates proclaim the benefits of decentralised decision making, enhanced school-community partnerships and flexibility in the use of resources, critics (Blackmore, 1998; Smyth, 1995) have questioned the extent to which such moves have increased local autonomy, especially in the light of increasing centralised curriculum control, nation-wide testing measures and reductions in the level of funding for public schools. Coincident with these developments has also been a pronounced shift towards a market approach to education with an emphasis on efficiency, productivity and international competitiveness (Morrow, Blackburn & Gill, 1998). As economic concerns have been pushed to the foreground, public policy has been increasingly dominated by a managerialist discourse (Marginson, 1997) which speaks of 'parental choice', 'clients', 'user pays' and an 'education industry'. As this new reform agenda has gathered momentum, it seems that even the rhetoric of social justice has vanished from policy texts (Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard & Henry, 1997).

Are there socially-just alternatives to a market model of the self-managing school? How might teachers harness the potential for increased local autonomy to drive a more radical social justice agenda? This paper presents a provisional and necessarily partial account of a critical ethnographic study of a South Australian public school which in many respects is 'swimming against the tide' of the prevailing market driven approach to schooling by maintaining an ongoing commitment and struggle for social justice. In what follows I want to:

Much of this talk might appear to paint a rather bleak picture for teachers engaged in school reform and indeed it would be foolish to deny the coercive power of mandated reform, especially in the context of globalising influences on education policy. However, I want to suggest that in spite of these constraints, schools are not passive recipients of state determined directives, nor are teachers simply enablers of policy developed elsewhere (Ball, 1990; Lingard & Garrick, 1997). As Connell (1993) points out "[e]ducational reforms eventually have to work through teachers, and worthwhile reforms have to work with them" (p. 57) so that in the final analysis policy is enacted in the context of schools and is likely to be subjected to various forms of appropriation, resistance and modification at the micropolitical level.

How much agency do schools really have in pursuing socially-just alternatives to the economic rationalist agenda described above? What does school reform look like at the grass roots level? I now turn to consider how the school that has been the focus of my study has developed its own reading and framework for addressing social justice.

When I commenced an ethnographic study of the school I was aware of its longstanding involvement in the now defunct Disadvantaged Schools Program and I was particularly interested in observing how teachers' understandings of social justice and educational disadvantage were being translated into practice at the whole school and classroom level. From the outset my aim was to anchor the text in the world of lived experiences (Denzin, 1997) by generating rich descriptions of teachers' interpretations of socially-just schooling practices. This approach involved an extensive phase of participant observation and ongoing dialogues with teachers in the form of semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with a group of about ten informants. Throughout the study I kept a reflective journal and supplemented my observations with photographic records, curriculum documents and field notes.

However, beyond the interpretive nature of the research, I also endeavoured to sustain a socially critical focus by attempting to situate participants' accounts "within a larger historical, political, economic and symbolic context" (van Maanen, 1995 p. 9) and seeking to uncover the social relationships which determine the actions of the actors (Angus, 1986). In other words, I attempted to ground the study in a critical appraisal of teachers' work and the reform agenda outlined earlier in this paper. Several questions guided my study:

As illustrated in the diagram on page 5, the research involved three rounds of 'purposeful conversations' ((Burgess, 1988) with individuals and groups of teachers during which the topics of the discussion moved from a focus on the local school and its curriculum response to social justice and the ways in which teachers' work is mediated by economic, political and cultural influences external to the school. I propose to conclude the empirical phase of the project with a participant seminar on social justice and schooling which will attempt to draw up a set of shared principles to guide curriculum development and school planning processes.

What did this research reveal about the way social justice is being interpreted at The Gums? I now offer some tentative conclusions at this point in the drafting of the thesis.

The Gums' response to educational 'disadvantage' also extends beyond a compensatory approach for targeted groups (such as Aboriginal students and girls) to embrace a culture of whole school reform for social justice. Here the question of how to address educational disadvantage is not viewed simply in terms of re-directing resources to overcome perceived cultural and linguistic deficits of particular groups but is fundamentally viewed as a curriculum concern. Such a position accords with Connell's (1993) assertion that social justice is more than a distributive question - it goes to the heart of the curriculum itself - and the question of 'how much' in education cannot be separated from 'what'. Hence there is an inescapable link between distribution and content, pedagogy, forms of assessment and evaluation processes. At The Gums the response to social justice seeks to engage with the broader causes of oppression encompassed in Young's notion of the 'politics difference' (Young, 1990) - a response which engages in a purposeful manner with issues of gender, cultural difference and racism within and through the curriculum.

One of the tangible expressions of this curriculum response is an emphasis on critical literacies as a means of repositioning students as researchers of language, problematising classroom and public texts and helping to foster respect for minority cultures (Luke, 1991). This has not meant adopting a laissez-faire pedagogy - on the contrary, a good deal of professional development has engaged teachers in discussions about explicit teaching practices to improve students' knowledge of language and writing.

In the remaining part of this section I want to draw on teachers' voices to show how the school's response to social justice has been nurtured by the development of a school culture centred on success-oriented learning and a positive affirmation of the heritage and culture of its students. In particular, I want to highlight the importance of the arts as a 'carrier' of social justice and the role of teachers' learning in helping to sustain a culture of debate about teaching and learning. What this looks like from a whole school reform perspective is represented diagrammatically on page 9.

One of the striking features of The Gums is the way in which it has been able to develop an internally persuasive discourse (Goodman, 1994) - that is, a discourse which engages from within instead of imposing itself from outside. Rather than submitting to authoritative discourses with closed or firmly fixed views of what constitutes 'good' teaching and learning, teachers at The Gums operate within a culture which keeps open the possibility of working towards alternative and potentially more transformative pedagogies.

It is quite apparent that the school is unwilling to discard an agenda that is responsive to the interests and concerns of the community in favour of some externally mandated reform or popular slogan. Teachers are not prepared to meekly acquiesce to national curricula, state wide testing regimes or externally imposed performance criteria simply because they have been sanctioned by the state. This does not mean that system initiatives are dismissed out-of-hand - on the contrary, they are carefully evaluated in the light of concerns and interests of teachers and the school's curriculum priorities, and in many instances are modified or appropriated to serve the school's agenda. Above all, the merits of each new initiative is assessed against a fundamental question: "How will this contribute to an improvement in the learning of all students in our school?"

In rejecting the prescriptive nature of many external school reform measures, teachers at The Gums recognise that their work involves more than the implementation of someone else's agenda. Instead, teaching is viewed by many as an intellectual activity (Giroux, 1988) that has a moral and political dimension which first and foremost is concerned with issues of social justice and education.

One of the prevailing views at The Gums is that successful teaching hinges on applying knowledge about the educational issues associated with poverty and the cultural backgrounds of students. It was pointed out that newly appointed teachers often take some time adjusting to the culture of the school - especially if their most recent teaching experiences have been in middle class communities. A teacher recalled the experiences of a colleague, and highly regarded teacher, as follows:

Another teacher expressed this dilemma somewhat more candidly:

These observations seem to strike at the very heart of the pedagogical relationship between teachers and students and serve as a reminder to newcomers about the need to think seriously about their own values which are likely to be at odds with the working class background of many students.

But how do teachers learn about socially-just teaching practices? In the first place, there is a concerted attempt to engage teachers in educative dialogues about the community and school structures and policies which address social injustice. A teacher explained what happens in the induction process.

Teachers' learning about social justice and educational disadvantage is on ongoing dialogue that takes place through collegiate teams, curriculum committees (arts, science, information technology, literacy, multiculturalism, Aboriginal education, success-oriented learning), a change committee and a leadership group. All of these groups serve as conduits for the professional development of teachers and School Service Officers (SSOs) and funding is made available to release teachers for workshops on such issues as poverty, multiculturalism and Aboriginal education. In addition, coordinators work with individual teachers and groups to support team-teaching practices and the development of a culture of success-oriented learning.

From the time of my first visit to The Gums the phrase 'success-oriented learning' seemed to be indelibly stamped on people's consciousness. I heard it voiced in staff meetings and collegiate team gatherings and it was never far from teachers' lips when they spoke to me of their philosophy and teaching practices. Whenever I entered a classroom I was immediately drawn to the posters and blackboard signage spelling out 'criteria for success' and I frequently overheard students asking the teacher, or their peers, "What do we need to do to be successful with this task?".

It seemed that the notion of success-oriented learning captured the day-to-day understanding of socially just relationships and practices in the school. For one teacher, it was the barometer of the school's commitment to social justice; for another, it represented the school's attempts to counteract the negative consequences of poverty and the deficit views of working class children. In some ways the emphasis on success could be viewed as an antidote to the more repressive forms of behaviour management which tend to focus on student control and punitive aspects of schooling. It was no coincidence that the school's Behaviour Management Committee was replaced with a Success-Oriented Learning Environment Committee as part of a carefully calculated effort to put "a new spin" on student success. A teacher explained that:

But the way in which the notion of success-oriented learning was enacted in practice involved more than enhancing students' self-esteem. Fundamentally, it represented a new way of reconfiguring student learning so that children were placed to the forefront of the curriculum in negotiating the criteria for success in classroom learning activities, generating ideas to guide the development of school priorities, playing a major role in conflict resolution programs and having a prominent voice in school decision making bodies. At the classroom level success-oriented learning meant giving children more power over their learning through the adoption of critical literacies and explicit teaching practices which positioned students as active constructors of knowledge.

At the whole school level the notion was promoted through the adoption of the Four Power Model, a strategy to enhance the success of students in poverty, developed by the Brotherhood of St Laurence (1990). For teachers at The Gums this model, with its emphasis on questions of power, resources and relationships, had become a major point of reference for examining the socially constructed nature of poverty and for countering deficit views of children from low socio-economic backgrounds.

The school's decision to develop the arts as a curriculum priority followed an extensive community consultation in which many children expressed a desire to learn more about the visual and performing arts. Within a year, the school grounds and buildings were transformed through a set of multicoloured murals designed and painted by teachers, students and parents. These murals depicted the heritage of the school and the community and were, in many respects, a celebration of the children's learning and the most visible expression of success-oriented learning.

Beyond these attributes, however, the arts also seemed to act as a 'carrier' of social justice in the school. Let me expand on this point through some of my journal reflections on a school musical performance involving more than 150 students.

Celebrating the heritage and culture at The Gums is sometimes achieved in quite spectacular ways, like the Grandparents' Day, school concerts, Heritage Week and a Cultural Plant Use Trail which informs students about the significance of native plants for the Ngarrindjeri people - a group of indigenous people with close spiritual and cultural links to the region. Each year the school participates in National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) and Asian culture is celebrated through a Chinese and Vietnamese Children's Festival. These events are not just one-off activities but are closely linked to classroom learning through integrated curriculum topics which affirm the school's commitment to multiculturalism and respect for the heritage of its students.

How the school counteracts racism needs to be placed in the context of this celebration of difference. Several teachers spoke to me of a rising incidence of racially motivated behaviour in the local community and commented specifically on the activities of National Action, a neo-Nazi organisation with a virulent anti-Asian and anti-Aboriginal platform. It was suggested that the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party had given racism a voice and some form of legitimacy in the community or, as one teacher noted, that in the wake of a conservative restoration in Australian politics it was now okay to be "non-politically correct". The rising level of racist attitudes of some parents at The Gums commonly expressed itself in criticisms of Asian people ("They're taking our jobs") and perceptions that Aboriginal people received welfare benefits not available to non-indigenous Australians ("We're really poor and we're struggling how come we don't get free books like Aboriginal families do.")

How does the school grapple with the issue of racism? Public schools in South Australia are required to implement the antiracism policy of the Department for Education, Training and Employment which provides a framework for racist discrimination and harassment grievance procedures. But how schools address racism in the context of their own communities is quite problematic. A teacher suggested that some parents who express racist views often display ambivalent and even contradictory attitudes towards other members of the school community. Teachers spoke of a recent school review of school priorities which asked parents and students to list five things which they thought represented quality at the school. Multiculturalism was given the highest ranking by the students and parents in many classes - even one of the families known to be involved in National Action rated it above all other attributes. A principal explained their rationale as follows:

How racism is addressed reveals a good deal about the prevailing culture and pedagogy of the school. Although there is an acknowledgment of the prevalence of racist prejudices and behaviours within the community these parents are not publicly condemned. Instead, there is a recognition of the complex nature of racism and of the subtle (if, at times, bewildering) ways in which it is expressed within the school. Accordingly, antiracist strategies appear to take account of the sensitivities of individuals and are focussed on educative rather than punitive measures - an approach which tends to locate racist behaviours within a culture of racism that permeates many realms of society.

At The Gums the prevailing school culture seems to be a powerful factor in working to silence racism, at least within the perimeters of the school. Parental perceptions of quality education show that there is a widely shared belief that the school is working to further the educational achievements of all students. For National Action parents it could well be the case that the happiness and success of their own children take precedence over their political views - or at least they put these views on hold in the school itself. But what happens when these parents and their children leave the school grounds? How is racism being addressed in the wider community? Although the school has attempted to engage parents in antiracism workshops there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that racial vilification persists in various forms in the adjacent suburbs. So concerned has the local council been about this issue that it has worked closely with a local secondary school in sponsoring a community coalition against racism.

The complexities associated with anti-racist strategies highlight some of the problematic aspects of school reform and it needs to be asserted that the school's efforts to sustain a culture of social justice are not taking place without daily struggles and tensions. Not all teachers are satisfied with the school's progress - for instance, a teacher suggested that "gender appears to be absent from a lot of the discussions" and pointed out that although some teachers had excellent gender construction programs she felt there was a prevailing view that the education of girls "had been done" in the eighties when it occupied a prominent role on the South Australian Social Justice Action Plan. In her opinion, the current federal government's Gender Equity Program (Ministerial Council for Employment, 1995) tended to reinforce this perception by shifting the emphasis from girls to gender in general. In addition, she suggested that schools now have to contend with a backlash popularised in the slogan, "What about the boys?"

The coercive power of the state is another factor which helps to undermine the possibility of school-based reform. In what follows I want to briefly explore the issue of resistance and accommodation through an analysis of the school's engagement with the Basic Skills Test.

The Basic Skills Test (BST) is a standardised literacy and numeracy testing program undertaken by students in Years 3 and 5 in South Australian public schools. From the outset the BST was opposed by the Australian Education Union which urged its members to boycott the tests - a stand that was initially supported by The Gums. A particularly strong argument was based on the grounds that the school already had far more sophisticated and extensive ways of identifying students with learning difficulties and this, coupled with a comprehensive reporting system, gave parents much more useful information about the educational progress and achievements of their children than could ever be elicited from the BST.

In addition, some teachers questioned the fairness of the tests for those students from non-English speaking backgrounds and they drew attention to the cultural norms and unfamiliar language embedded in such tests. All of this was nicely captured by a student who raised her hand to seek help in decoding an unfamiliar word. "Please Miss, what's a muffin?" she asked with a puzzled look on her face. As I was to observe in professional development forums, discussions about critical literacy rarely passed without some reference to this incident and over time the question, "What's a muffin?" seemed to reflect the essence of what teachers perceived to be fundamentally wrong with standardised testing regimes.

Initially The Gums teachers and the majority of parents supported the Australian Education Union stand and in the first year only a handful of children sat for the test. (It should be noted that, in the absence of teacher cooperation, school principals were directed by the department to supervise students undertaking the BST.) But over the next two years the school's position began to change. One of the dilemmas facing non compliant schools, particularly those serving disadvantaged school communities, was that funding to support additional literacy assistance was tied to the performances in the BST. Schools with a significant number of students in the lowest levels of literacy or numeracy strands qualified for the highest level of financial resources to support special literacy assistance programs. With the demise of the Disadvantaged Schools Program and other equity projects, this carrot and stick approach became a leverage to shift the resolve of financially strapped school communities.

This financial imperative was driven home most forcefully when a neighbouring school which had participated fully in the program received a substantial grant from the department as a result of the BST results whilst The Gums limited involvement secured a paltry amount to support early intervention programs. As a consequence, although some parents and a number of teachers continued to oppose the BST, the school withdrew its outright opposition and the battle lines weakened. A teacher explained that the crux of the issue was not money. "If it was", she said, "we would make them all do it." Rather, she believed that the Year 3 and 5 teachers' agreement to administer the test was more in support of their families and a recognition of the imperative of addressing student needs.

An interesting form of resistance has involved what might be called a 'dumbing-down' process in which teachers' compliance with the BST (in order to secure funding) has been accompanied by a calculated campaign to down play the usefulness of these tests whilst at the same time affirming the educational value of teacher's professional judgement when it comes to identifying students with learning difficulties. The school continues to make extensive use of school-based information as the basis for curriculum initiatives and has engaged parents in ongoing discussions about literacy issues through curriculum meetings and public forums. While this action might be seen as a form of accommodation to a narrow and instrumental testing program, it could also be viewed as a creative and politically astute move which ensures access to funding without caving in to the more repressive elements of standardised testing measures.

The conflict over the BST at The Gums illustrates the coercive capacities of governments and education systems in securing the support of schools for policy implementation. Increasingly, it appears that funding for curriculum development and special needs programs is conditional on schools and educational institutions embracing a range of accountability procedures which are often at odds with progressive educational practices. (Other examples include the Commonwealth literacy grants and national curriculum). However, because accountability measures rarely extend to the level of practice, there appears to be some space for teachers to resist - at least at the margins of policy implementation.

One of the lessons of the BST is that schools attempting to advance a social justice agenda of this kind have to come to terms with the necessity of having to work with organisations and structures whose goals and principles are far from aligned with their own. Deever (1996a; 1996b) argues if schools are to move beyond a language of possibility to one of probability they need to engage in a process of negotiation with those institutions and departments responsible for framing educational policies and practices. Taking an oppositional stance and refusing to participate in any dialogue with such authorities is not the answer. Instead, there needs to be a recognition that many bureaucratic practices and structures cannot be changed overnight and that it is far better to engage in a process of 'tactical appropriation' of the language and discourse of these institutions and movements.

At The Gums 'enlightened poaching' of this kind is evident in their use of the current educational jargon, in which terms like 'criteria', 'educational outcomes' and 'enterprise education' invariably take on a social/cultural orientation. For example, a glossy information brochure, The GumsGraduate, extolling the qualities of a successful school leaver, emphasises social criteria, team work and conflict resolution skills along with literacy and numeracy skills. It could be argued that such appropriation enables the school to project an image as an educational community which is willing to engage with the dominant discourses of the time without jettisoning its own socially-critical orientation.

Several aspects of the school's capacity to work through elements of resistance are worthy of comment. Firstly, the school has not closed down the public spaces where conflicting views about the school's curriculum directions can be debated and considered in the light of new ideas. Rather, the school has taken seriously the notion of keeping dialogues open and allowing for the continued exploration of major curriculum issues. The following remarks from a teacher at the school capture the nature of this process rather well:

As the narrator of this story went on to say, often quite productive outcomes can emerge out of situations where authenticity is tested to the extreme:

Secondly, the school has strategies and processes which actively engage members of the school community in curriculum change so that they develop their own knowledge and understanding of new ideas and approaches to learning. A spectacular example of this took place when the school embarked on the painting of a set of murals to enhance the aesthetic and educational environment of the grounds and buildings as part of the arts curriculum focus. A teacher who described himself as a 'failed artist' managed to secure 20 TRT days to release teachers for a series of workshops designed to teach them the necessary skills to get the project up and running. Parents also participated in these workshops and joined forces with the students to make the murals a truly community project.

In short, the school has managed to win the support of parents and students to ensure a sense of community ownership of the school's vision that goes a long way to counteracting the forms of opposition to curriculum reform encountered in less democratic and less civic-minded communities.

There is little doubt that in the present context of market place reform teachers engaged in school reform for social justice are "swimming against the tide" (Freire, 1985) or, to pursue another metaphor, "teaching against the grain" (Cochran-Smith, 1991). Yet it is apparent from this study that it is still possible for school communities and committed teachers to find some space for a more radical approach to schooling - one which interrupts the dominant managerialist discourse and seeks to nurture a more democratic ethos (Goodman, 1994). In other words, as Smyth & Shacklock (1998) point out:

It is also apparent that strategies to address the complex issues associated with educational disadvantage need to be worked out locally by teachers and those whose lives are most intimately connected to the education and welfare of students. This is not to deny the urgent need for a system sponsored reform process developed out of the concerns of teachers and school communities but it does affirm (Griffiths, 1998a; 1998b) contention that theoretical frameworks and practical strategies for addressing social justice need to be developed in collaboration with teachers and must take account of the immediate context of the school community, that is they have to be "home grown". As I have shown at the Gums, a combination of social, economic and cultural factors has helped to generate a complex set of social justice issues which has brought about a thoughtfully framed indigenous response to poverty, racism and other injustices.

Finally, I believe that this study confirms the importance of teaching as a moral and political activity that can make a significant contribution to the amelioration of educational disadsvantages and the creation of a fairer society.

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